Women inmates helping to transcribe historical newspapers

A large effort to put 60,000 pages of historical Hawaii newspapers online is getting volunteers from an unlikely source — Hawaii’s prison system.

Organizers and prison officials are pitching the program as a way for incarcerated women to reconnect with Hawaii’s rich history and culture — to more fully understand why they see the world the way they do.

Warden Mark Patterson of the Women’s Community Correctional Center says most of the inmates there suffered some kind of traumatic event in their lives before committing the crime that got them to prison. He says transcribing the newspapers will help the women make sense of deep-seated anger and other emotions they may not fully understand.

About 30 inmates have signed on to help transcribe newspapers from 1834 to 1948.